


Only When I Sleep

by gingerandtonic



Category: Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Genre: Dreams, F/F, Femslash, Friends to Lovers, Nancy panicking for 3 and 1/2 months, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-12-01 23:08:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20928938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerandtonic/pseuds/gingerandtonic
Summary: Nancy isn't accustomed to dreaming. Especially not dreams like... this.





	Only When I Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> I've heard it said that if you can't find the representation you need in a community, then create it yourself. In that spirit, here's another Nancy/George fanfic for anyone else who, like me, has spent too much time scouring the web for this pairing. 
> 
> Title is borrowed from the song 'Only When I Sleep' by the Corrs, because the whole idea for the fic jumped into my head halfway through listening to it.

Nancy jolted awake in the middle of the night, gasping, sweat prickling all over. She stared out into the darkness of her room wildly, chest heaving, eyes darting around looking for the source of her anxiety.

Nothing was there. The window was latched, her door was closed.

She lay back down, forced herself to breathe a little slower and tried to remember what had woken her up so violently.

_Nancy pushed George back onto the bed, climbing on top of her as she fell. She felt George’s hands grasp her round her waist as the other girl rose slightly to meet her face, their mouths connecting feverishly. Nancy moaned into the kiss and pressed herself deeper into George’s embrace as her friend stroked a hand down her thigh. She pulled away to tear at the buttons on George’s blouse before giving up and pulling the entire thing over her head, relishing the feeling of the other girl’s soft pale skin under her fingers and pressing open-mouthed kisses to her neck as she ran a hand down the valley of her breasts _

Fuck, that couldn’t be right.

Nancy took in a shaky breath, let it out slowly and reached out with a fumbling hand to her bedside table to turn on the lamp. She winced as light flooded through the room.

She tried to remember any other figure, anyone at all, but it was no use. Her lover in the dream had been unavoidably female, and she had unavoidably had all of George’s features.

Nancy checked the clock. 1:40am. God, this was maddening. It took a lot to rattle her, but this really took the cake. It had only been a dream, it didn’t even mean anything!

She got out of bed, paced over to her dresser and picked up a book she’d started the day before. Lying there thinking about it all wasn’t going to help her get back to sleep. She resolved to put it to the back of her mind until daylight.

When her eyelids started to droop again she put the book aside, switched off the lamp and settled back down into the pillows. But with her eyes closed everything flooded back again – the touches, the feeling of the kiss, the feeling of another body pressed against hers. If only it had been as hazy as the last dream she had had two weeks ago, when she shared a soft kiss with someone she couldn’t quite recall. But that wasn’t quite the full truth either, because that had been a short-haired woman as well.

Nancy turned over impatiently, opened her eyes again and tried not to think about George.

\-----

Thank god she didn’t have to be anywhere the next day. Nancy was on her second mug of coffee and not feeling any brighter. Her brain was a whirlwind of confusion with no end in sight.

Mysteries were far easier to solve than something like this. At least with a case she could analyse the evidence and know that an answer was waiting out there for her, somewhere. A dream was a different matter altogether. How could she even approach thinking about this? Why even keep thinking about it when it was all just in her head? Why couldn’t she stop thinking about it…

Two hours later, Nancy wasn’t any closer to putting the dream out of her mind and she was starting to get frustrated. Clearly she needed a new approach.

She went up to her room, sat down at the dresser and pulled out a worn journal she liked to use for times when she had hit a roadblock in a case. Jotting down everything in her consciousness could be useful.

With burning red cheeks she started to write down everything she recalled from the dream – and then faltered as she began to read it over, realizing that her heart was beginning to thump and her throat was dry. Eventually with a frown she decided to write down those symptoms too. Might as well be thorough.

For good measure, she started to think about anything that could have triggered the dreams in the first place. Was it that she wasn’t currently working on a case? Maybe. Her brain certainly hadn’t been as busy as it was when she had a mystery to solve. Was it anything to do with George herself? Well… that was harder to answer. She was certain nothing had been different between the two of them. The last time they’d been in the same room, she was hanging out with George and Bess and they were reminiscing about when George first got her hair cut short. She still remembered it now, actually; the day when George had turned up to her house with close cropped hair and a nervous yet excited grin on her face, and how she’d self-consciously run a hand through her hair when Nancy complimented it, and the way Nancy hadn’t been able to tear her eyes away from her, the way she’d thought of her friend for days after-

_Oh_, Nancy breathed. Maybe there was something to that. Maybe this went back further than she’d thought.

But it was natural for friends to admire other friends so much, wasn’t it? It didn’t mean anything. George had been so excited, so confident in herself after that moment, and Nancy had been so happy for her. It was only natural that she had thought of George a lot after that. She was sure she had thought of Bess too, every so often. Maybe.

Nancy eventually stopped writing and surveyed her notes. This was all starting to look very incriminating, and for once she was the prime suspect. It was all there in front of her, and yet this made very little sense in practice. How could she even have these kinds of feelings? Was she sure they weren’t platonic? Was it just this stupid dream, messing with her head?

She was relieved that Hannah was out that afternoon. Nancy stole downstairs to the kitchen, journal in hand, and fetched some matches from the drawer. She tore the offending pages out, scrunched them into balls and threw them into the sink, dropping a lit match in after them.

No one could ever know about this.

\----

‘Wow Nancy, you sound awful. Is everything alright?’

‘Everything’s fine’, Nancy sighed down the phone, ‘I just didn’t get much sleep last night. I had a bad dream and couldn’t really relax afterwards’.

‘Oh, poor Nan! What was it about?’

‘Can’t remember’. She was gripping the phone too hard, her hand wouldn’t stop shaking.

‘Well, hopefully you’ll rest better tonight. Do you still want to come over today?’

‘I’m sorry Bess, I think I’m too exhausted… I might try and catch up on some sleep today. Tell George I’m sorry, too’.

‘You poor thing!’. Bess sounded so sympathetic, so understanding as usual, and Nancy felt worse than before. ‘I guess I’d better let you get some rest then. Take care, Nan’.

The coffee had actually perked her up more than she’d let on to Bess. What she couldn’t face today was seeing George while knowing what they’d gotten up to in her subconscious. It felt like a betrayal. Like she had trespassed without the permission of her friend, even if she hadn’t intended for it to happen.

Besides, she needed to make sure this didn’t happen again. Space might be good for her right now, and time to think this through further. And if distance from George didn’t work, then she’d have to think up a plan of attack.

\-----

_Nancy let out a barely suppressed moan as George raked her fingers through her hair, letting them trail idly down her neck. Her friend pressed her firmly against the wall as their kisses grew increasingly deeper and more open. Nancy gasped into the kiss as George shifted her thigh and pressed it firmly against her core, feeling a flood of desire wave through her as she threw back her head and moaned _

Oh god, not this again. This was what, two weeks in a row now?

Nancy sighed and rolled over to check the clock. 3:17am this time, and she could feel the stress of it all weighing on her again already. She had no clue where her subconscious was even getting this from, it wasn’t as if she had ever done anything with a woman before.

She lay there in silence, turning the dream over and over and feeling a weird mixture of desire and revulsion at herself. Nancy really wasn’t used to feeling this way about someone, let alone having graphic dreams about them.

‘Shit’, she whispered to herself, getting out of bed and finding her book. ‘I’m such a freak’.

\-----

Eventually, after close to a month, Nancy had to grudgingly admit that avoiding George during the day seemed to make her dreams worse at night. And more frequent. And more… explicit.

Maybe she’d been approaching this in the wrong way. Seeing George in person might help her reinforce in her mind that they were strictly friends only, and nothing more than that. A whole month without seeing her two best friends had been miserable and she wasn’t sure it had been worth it.

She picked up the phone and dialed Bess’ number.

\----

Nancy jumped slightly as the doorbell rang and Hannah’s footsteps echoed up the stairwell. Bess and George’s voices floated up as they greeted the housekeeper, and Nancy’s stomach twisted into knots.

She sighed in frustration at herself, but had no time to dwell on it as Bess burst through her bedroom door and wrapped her up in a tight hug. ‘I’m so glad you’re better, Nan. I was worried sick about you!’ Bess gave the best hugs, and Nancy had really missed them so much.

‘Bess, don’t be so dramatic. It was just a mild flu, it’s not like she was on death’s door’, George said wryly as she stepped into the room. Nancy caught her gaze from over Bess’ shoulder and her stomach dropped suddenly. Fuck, this might be harder than she’d thought.

‘I’m fine, Bess’, she managed to croak out with an increasingly dry mouth. ‘Feeling much better already’.

‘Has Hannah taken your temperature today?’ Bess pressed her worriedly, cupping her face in her hands. ‘Your skin is all hot! Look George, she’s as red as a beet’.

‘I would be too if someone just barreled through my door without warning’, George teased her lightly. She stepped towards Nancy and pulled her into a tight hug. ‘Missed you, Nance’.

Had George’s arms always felt this soft and smooth? Nancy breathed in the familiar scent of her friend and then moved out of the hug as quickly as possible, hoping the other girl hadn’t felt how fast her heart was beating.

The couple of hours that the girls spent with her passed quickly, as they always did. But the air felt heavy with something new, or at least it felt that way to Nancy. Her stomach flip flopped as George rested her chin on her hand and met her gaze. She felt ashamed every time the other girl caught her staring, but also a rush of… something. Something between desire, and affection, and fear, and excitement.

It was almost a relief when they both left and Nancy could relax again, and yet she felt a gnawing ache of disappointment in her chest. She wanted to run after George, grab her hand and pull her back, push her up against a wall…

Wait, what the fuck was she thinking? Nancy groaned quietly and let her head sink into her hands. She wasn’t used to having so little emotional self-control. Her life was usually so logical and easy and calm – desire was so infuriating, as she had been finding out this past month. Trying to unravel it as if it were a mystery felt like it might lead to a scarier predicament than any danger she’d ever been in.

She leaned up against the door and her eyes fell neatly on the spot where George had been sitting on the corner of her bed. Only the ruffled bedsheets remained now. She’d met George’s gaze so many times over those two hours – was that normal? Had George always looked at her that often? Or was she the one staring? _Oh god, I hope she didn’t notice anything. _

Nancy got up off the door and hurried downstairs to the kitchen to make some tea – more as an excuse to distract herself than anything else – and found Hannah already in there pulling a mug out of the cupboard as the kettle started to boil.

She gratefully accepted the cup that the housekeeper poured for her and was just starting to relax a little when Hannah turned to her again.

‘You might want to warn me next time you’ve got a cover story planned, Nancy. I nearly gave you away when Bess walked in this morning all worried about your recovery from the flu’.

Nancy promptly choked on her mouthful of tea. ‘S-sorry?!’ she spluttered out, even though she could already see it was useless to deny it.

‘I know you’re not usually one to lie like that’, Hannah continued calmly, filling a glass of water for Nancy while passing her a napkin for her dress. ‘You always have a good reason for these sorts of things. But clearly if you’re unwell I’m going to be the one nursing you, aren’t I? I’m surprised you didn’t anticipate Bess saying something to me’.

_All this time I’ve lived with Hannah_, Nancy inwardly chided herself, _and I’d completely forgotten that she’s as sharp as a tack_. ‘Sorry, Hannah’, she sighed as she put down the glass. ‘I guess it didn’t think it through very well. It took long enough to come up with that excuse’.

She felt Hannah’s gaze boring into her. ‘What’s wrong? I don’t even remember the last time you spent so long away from those girls. Did something happen?’

Nancy bit her lip and tried to ignore the flush rising up her neck. ‘Nothing really. I guess I just haven’t been sleeping well, and it’s made me exhausted.’

Hannah raised an eyebrow but seemed to decide against pressing her any further. ‘Maybe a hot bath, then? Or a walk. Get all the restlessness out of your body before dusk falls.’

‘M-maybe I’d better do that’, Nancy agreed quickly as she drained her mug and decided to leave before her entire body turned red. ‘Thanks for the tea, Hannah’.

‘Let me know if you want to talk about it’, the housekeeper replied. Nancy left quickly before the other woman could see her face.

The evening air was a cool relief. Nancy sat on a park bench and exhaled slowly, listening to the sound of the wind through the trees, feeling both incredibly relaxed and incredibly unsettled all at once.

Seeing George had confirmed that this had progressed past her dreams and into reality. Nancy couldn’t get away with passing it off as anything platonic anymore, not after the way she’d felt earlier that day. Somehow, after a month it was starting to almost feel normal. And yet the guilt still gnawed at her worse than ever.

She’d felt even worse though when she was spending time apart from Bess and George. She might have gotten away with it once – just – but it wouldn’t be fair to them or herself if she spent another month faking the flu. And that wasn’t ever going to work as a long-term solution. She needed a plan B, and fast. Until then she had to suppress it all as best she could.

She walked home so fast that her legs ached and she gasped for breath, a little like how she had been gasping for breath in that last dream – but no. No more dreams. If they happened again, she wasn’t going to dwell on it.

\----

She didn’t jolt awake that night, or the next. Her sleep passed uneventfully, and if there was a wisp of a dream where she felt George’s lips pressing softly against her neck, it wasn’t vivid enough for her to remember properly. Maybe suppression was working after all, and she wouldn’t need a second plan.

Things started to feel normal again, especially when her father wrote from New York asking if she would do a little investigating for him on behalf of one of his clients. Nancy jumped at the chance to distract her brain and dived head-first into the case, spending hours in the library searching through newspaper clippings. Suspected fraud wasn’t exactly the most exciting subject, but anything was better than accidentally thinking about things she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about.

Gathering enough evidence ended up taking longer than she’d initially thought. Her initial search through newspapers finally turned up a pair of stories from the last year, six months apart, that mentioned her father’s suspect under two of his aliases. Both times he had been caught accepting loans from well-meaning victims, but with a different name on each clipping he’d managed to fly under the radar the second time. Her father’s client had given her permission to look through bank statements, which ended up being enormously helpful when the figures didn’t add up. In the end it became clear that the suspect had been quietly, slowing siphoning money out of multiple accounts and sending it overseas – no doubt to his own, under a variety of names.

It was always so satisfying to break through to the end of her work, and to finally present her findings to her father and his client. Maybe she should have felt prouder of herself, but all Nancy really felt was relief that she’d slept soundly for the last two months. Having a mystery on the brain was good for her.

\-----

It was 4am, and Nancy Drew was wide awake, aroused and furious with herself. One week after she had wrapped up the case she was now sitting up in bed again, trying her hardest not to think about what had just happened in her dream. It had felt so much more vivid this time. And so much more explicit.

This was all just starting to get too ridiculous, and if she was going to be dealing with this every time she had downtime from a case then she needed to do something proper about it. To hell with suppression.

That morning Nancy dragged herself out of bed late, brewed a ridiculously strong coffee and dialed the Fayne house’s number before she lost her nerve. George sounded confused that she wanted to meet with her alone – even concerned, possibly – but Nancy was determined to go ahead anyway. A direct approach would be better than slinking around with all this guilt inside her. It felt cowardly anyway, to do that. And she had the whole day to plan out how to do this properly.

When she stood on the Fayne’s porch the following day after a mercifully sound night of sleep, Nancy felt far more confident than she had done in months. She had her plan, she was going to say her piece, reassure George that she wouldn’t let this compromise their friendship, and then she’d leave and hopefully having it all out in the open would made this stupid desire go away. Nancy hated keeping secrets. She spent half her life working to uncover secrets and so she knew how vulnerable hiding something could make a person. This approach was much better, in the long run. And she felt sure George wouldn’t react badly. Bess might, but Bess didn’t need to know anything about this. George took most things in her stride.

She knocked, and when George opened the door a minute later Nancy almost lost her nerve. That her friend could have such a strong effect on her already was ridiculous. Nancy had been in far more hair-raising situations than this and yet she felt weak at the knees. She couldn’t wait to put this all to rest.

‘Come in’, George greeted her, looking somewhat nervous herself. She walked with Nancy into the empty sitting room. ‘My family’s out all day, so we probably won’t be disturbed. Is everything alright Nance? It sounded pretty serious on the phone’.

‘Yeah, of course’, Nancy replied with her heart in her throat. ‘Everything’s fine. I just need to talk to you about… something.’

She sat down on the couch, and George sat next to her. Tension was already thick in the air, so Nancy decided that it was best to just dive straight into things.

‘For the last three and a half months, I’ve been having some… strange dreams. They’ve been waking me up in the night, keeping me from sleeping properly and it’s reached a point where I can’t really deal with them much longer.’

George raised an eyebrow at her. ‘What kinds of dreams?’

‘Uh… I don’t really want to explain the content in them, but they’ve been a bit… explicit’.

Now George was raising both eyebrows at her. ‘Explicit? Are you sure Bess shouldn’t be a part of this conversation? This is more her domain really’.

‘No, no’, Nancy protested hurriedly. ‘I’m excluding Bess for her own good, believe me. And I’m only telling you about this becauseyou’vebeeninallofthem’.

In absolute determination she spilled the truth out so quickly that she wasn’t sure George had understood her properly. The other girl frowned.

‘Huh? What do you mean, Nance? How could I have been in them… oh’.

George never got embarrassed, but now she had flushed deeply all the way up her body in a way Nancy had never seen before. God, maybe this had been a mistake. Maybe she could make a break for it still, change her name and catch the next flight overseas.

‘I – I tried to distract myself’, she pressed on. ‘I threw myself into that fraud case I was telling you about, and that helped. But when it finished the dreams came straight back and now I don’t really know what else to do. But now that I’ve told you, and it’s all out in the open I’m sure they’ll stop. And I want to reassure you that this isn’t going to come between our friendship, I want to keep things completely platonic, and - ’

She broke off, confused as she realized George was now smiling. ‘Hypers Nance, if I’d known you were going to tell me this I would have given you a shot of whiskey first. I know you have strong nerves but that’s one hell of a confession’. She relaxed back into the couch, still red but grinning.

Nancy let out a long breath and allowed herself a small smile. ‘So… you don’t mind, then?’

‘You’re hardly in control of your dreams’, George reassured her. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t tell Bess, though. I think she’d read into it too much’. Nancy had to laugh at the thought of Bess’ horrified reaction. She felt the weight start to lift from her shoulders.

‘So are you into women, then?’ George continued lightly. _Oh god, not that question_. ‘I… don’t know, exactly. These dreams are just my subconscious, I’ve never thought about them during the day’, she flat-out lied.

‘Oh? No even once? Didn’t you ever wonder what it would feel like in real life?’

George’s tone was still light, but now her gaze was fixed on the other girl quite steadily and Nancy could feel her mouth drying up. This wasn’t a question she’d anticipated.

‘I – uh – have you?!’ She blurted out in panic, realizing as she said it that it made no sense.

‘Maybe I have’, George replied.

This was suddenly starting to get wildly out of hand. Nancy was losing control of the situation fast, and she was so thrown off by George’s response that she had no idea where to go from here. She thought again about getting up and leaving, but something inside rooted her to the couch.

‘Maybe… maybe I have too’. It fell out of her mouth before she could keep it in.

‘I know’, George replied with a half-smile. When had she gotten so close? ‘You’re good at a lot of things, Nance, but you’re not a very good liar’.

Nancy didn’t know what to say to that. George was inches away from her, and she could feel her breath on her skin. Her friend’s eyes were dark, and slightly lidded, and now she was close enough that Nancy caught her scent and felt as if she were swimming.

‘It wouldn’t mean anything, right?’ she half-whispered. George locked eyes with her.

‘Not unless you want it to’.

‘Maybe it would make the dreams go away entirely’.

‘Maybe it would’.

Nothing she’d dreamt about could have prepared her for the feeling of George’s fingers lightly wrapping around the back of her neck and pulling her forward into a soft kiss. Everything else flew out of her brain as she fixated wholly on the way George’s hands moved to rest on her arms lightly, and how she brought her own hands up in response to tangle through that smooth short hair, and the swell of desire that rose in her chest suddenly as George uttered a quiet little moan and deepened the kiss even more, and –

The two of them jumped apart violently as the door knocker echoed down the hall. ‘Shit!’ George hissed, springing to her feet. ‘Nancy, quickly! Hide!’

It didn’t make much sense for Nancy to hide, but she dove behind the couch anyway. She didn’t think she could string two words together in front of anyone right now. She was having a hard enough time breathing properly as it was.

She listened as George walked down the hallway, opened the door and – shit, that was Bess’ voice. Thank god she’d hid. Bess could read Nancy like a book and Nancy knew it all too well.

She wasn’t sure what either of the two were saying. Everything was passing in a blur and her head was still spinning from that kiss. Nancy only snapped back into reality when George reappeared and extended a hand down behind the sofa, pulling her to her feet.

‘Bess is so confused’, she grinned ruefully. ‘I told her I was expecting a phone call any minute now, and I couldn’t say who it was. She probably thinks I’m hiding a secret boyfriend, or something’.

Nancy half-smiled, half-winced at the thought. She took a deep breath and reached out a shaky hand, resting it on George’s warm arm and looked up at her.

‘Listen, George… god, I’m not very good at this, but – do you want to do this again sometime?’

George laughed a little, took hold of Nancy’s hand and pulled her closer gently. ‘I’d like that, Nance’.

Nancy slept better that night than she had in years.


End file.
